Scratch Nights X Homegrown

Where Bones Take Root is an intimate performance experiment exploring chronic illness, rest, and connection through the language of the natural world. Blending storytelling, sound, and digital invitation, it asks what happens when tired bodies are centred rather than accommodated. Developed from a home-based creative practice, this work-in-progress sharing invites audiences into a developing poetic ecology of connective tissue, mycelium, and care. 
 
About the Artist and Collaborators:

Lisa Franklin is a queer, disabled artist and producer based in Sheffield. Her practice explores play, chronic illness, and more-than-human collaboration, often working with fungi, flora, and immersive storytelling to create accessible experiences that aim to reconnect audiences with their place within the natural world. She works across socially engaged art, performance, and digital forms, with projects and collaborations including Culture Declares Emergency, Southbank Centre, Midlands Arts Centre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Talking Birds and Ludic Rooms. 
 
Collaborator Credits:
Creative Technical Support: Rachel Bunce/RB Films 
 
Connect
Instagram - @thelanguageofgrowing  
https://lisafranklinmakes.com/ 

The Disabled Son asks: What if the prodigal son from the Gospel of Luke were disabled? What if, returning to his father to ask for support, instead of being welcomed with grace, he was forced to complete humiliating tasks to prove his worth? Combining storytelling with shadow puppetry, this performance explores the paternalism experienced by disabled people in Britain.

About the Artist and Collaborators:
Matt Alton is a writer and performer based in Manchester, whose work explores the welfare system, chronic illness and the visibility of such conditions. 
  
His prose blends stories from his life with retellings of fairytales and religious stories, asking how things could be otherwise. The Blue Shoes, published by Disabled Tales, worked through how to use the fairytale form to tell a disabled story without relying on ableist tropes. 
  
His poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies including Under the Radar and Broken Sleep's Masculinity: an anthology of modern voices. A film-poem, made with artist Chris Alton, jointly won the Exeter Contemporary Award. 
  
He is an Extra Teeth mentee and an Apples and Snakes Future Voice. 
 
Connect
@mattaltonpoet 
https://mattalton.com 

Ever wondered what it would feel like to wake up as a mermaid? Changing Shadows is a one-woman live art performance blending spoken word, projection and shadow puppetry. 
Through surreal humour and striking visuals, it explores what happens when the body changes and the familiar self begins to dissolve. 
Part dream, part transformation, this intimate piece asks: when everything shifts, what new form might emerge?

About the Artist and Collaborators:

I am a disabled cabaret performer and multidisciplinary artist creating bold, accessible work rooted in resilience, humour and transformation. Using physical comedy, I challenge expectations around disability, age, femininity and sexuality, often drawing on mythology and folklore.

Over a 35-year career, I’ve performed and exhibited across the UK and internationally, including at Tate Liverpool and in New York, collaborating with artists such as Stelarc, Mat Fraser and Liz Carr, and organisations including Candoco Dance Company, the BBC Philharmonic and Unlimited.

Following a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis, I created my alter ego Diva Hollywood - becoming the UK’s leading whip-cracking cabaret performer and touring internationally.

After a recent pause in my career due to breast cancer and fibromyalgia, I am now returning to making work, exploring new forms including puppetry and animation as I step into the next phase of my practice.

Collaborators

Steve Angstrom – Music and Technical Support

Steve is an electronic musician and sound designer whose work explores the repurposing and recontextualising of mediated experience. He has performed across the UK and internationally, including in Berlin, Japan, and at Waking Life Festival (Portugal), with releases on Sleepers and Cherry Red Records.

Mandy Redvers-Rowe – Accessible Writing Mentor

Mandy is a theatre-maker specialising in inclusive and disability-led performance. She is an actor, director, and co-founder of Smashing Mirrors Theatre Company, with a background in physical theatre and visually-led storytelling.

Sarah-Louise Young – Mentor and Dramaturg

Sarah-Louise is an award-winning cabaret and theatre artist, best known as the creator of An Evening Without Kate Bush. She supports the development of the work as a mentor and dramaturg.

Ramesh Meyyappan – Visual Language Mentor

Ramesh is an internationally acclaimed theatre-maker whose work has toured widely. He brings expertise in physical and visual theatre, including choreographed movement and sign mime, supporting the development of visual storytelling and deaf accessibility.

Connect 
https://www.facebook.com/divahollywood.hollywood/ 
https://divahollywood.com/ 
https://www.instagram.com/divahollywood/

I Am Still Here is a performance by Matt Allen about living with energy limiting conditions and always being online in order to maintain social connections when you are housebound.  Performed from bed, it explores how small actions, care, recovery and social interaction can trigger disproportionate consequences. The piece tests liveness in digital spaces, looking at how fatigue and connection are constantly negotiated. 
 
About the Artist and Collaborators:

Matt makes digital and interactive artworks and video games for galleries, festivals and public spaces. His practice explores chronic illness, dreams and immersive environments, often using Unity to create experiences that can exist both in physical spaces and online.  
 
Connect 
Instagram: mattallenartist 
closedforum.co.uk